


my names blurryface and i care what you think

by stjimmys



Series: 21p [1]
Category: BLURRYFACE - Twenty One Pilots (Album), Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, holy shit, this is literally 12 pages long in google docs, wait no its actually 17 pages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-15
Updated: 2015-11-15
Packaged: 2018-05-01 16:26:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5212736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stjimmys/pseuds/stjimmys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>blurryface doesnt exactly care what tyler thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	my names blurryface and i care what you think

**Author's Note:**

> this is literally an assignment i did for school, i had to write a spooky story for lit and i immediately wanted to write about blurryface and how fucking terrifying they are.  
> go to the bottom notes for trigger warnings

Maybe it was just a little discouragement from his cousins months before, of that one time Zack said he was a bad piano player. But these thoughts were terrible to deal with everyday to begin with.

The first thought of feeling like an utter failure was after school. After gym class, 6th period and right before lunch. Today’s technical lesson was basketball, and Tyler Joseph couldn’t be more excited. He was only in the 6th grade, and despite being a scrawny little kid he had some skills. 

Picking teams, his big brown eyes that matched his fluffy brown hair were always mistaken for idiocy; he got picked last almost every time but proved the opposing team wrong for not picking him by making a three-pointer in the first few minutes of the game.

No one really knew that Tyler was on the basketball team for the school, and Tyler was okay with that. It meant that he could impress everyone in his class each day. Even though now he was feeling a bit off his game. He pouted the rest of the day when he didn’t make a single basket in class afterwards, annoyed with himself. He should be good at this sport, not bad.

He went home that night and sat at his desk, letting his mind carve works into his journal with a black ball-point pen.

Tyler wouldn’t admit to his teammates that he would much rather write poetry and songs than shoot baskets. Besides Zack and his mother, no one else knew that he had so many things on his mind that he wish he could let out. He kept it all; inside his head, which was bursting at the seams; he kept things in journals, in the margins of books, he even scribbled on the walls of his bedroom if a notebook was too far away.

But the stress of it all was weighing on him, and the thoughts we getting worse.

The thoughts, at first, were minimal. A snide remark here, a testy comment there. Nothing too big either. Now, however, they were getting specific.

Tyler was practicing in the driveway for basketball tryouts next week when he heard someone talking to him, seeming to he right behind his head.

“You can’t do this shot, and you’re not gonna be able to complete it by practicing. Just give it up already.”

Tyler spun around fast, his tank top loosely waving as he came to a stop. He glanced around with a raised eyebrow, confused.

“Zack, are you playing games again?” Tyler blinked into the darkness, staring off towards the lamp post at the end of the driveway. The voice returned, but he could see who it was coming from now.

“This ain’t your brother, Ty,” the guy said, his vocal chords deeper than a normal voice.

He looked kind of familiar to Tyler. Red beanie, black tee and gym shorts, red socks with some black Vans. He kind of looked exactly like Tyler - same height, same hunched shoulders and all that - except that his eyes were a beady red that glowed brightly back at him.

Absolutely terrified, Tyler dropped his basketball and ran back inside. Slamming the door behind him, he called out, “Mom?! Dad?!”

Long story short, when his parents got downstairs, they guy with the red eyes was gone. They consoled him for a few minutes before ushering him to bed, and shutting the door once he had laid down against his bed and shut his eyes.

Tyler shot up on his mattress once he heard their own bedroom door shut and reached over for his journal on his bedside table. Clicking a pen over and over a few times, he began to write details of that guy looked like - the prominent features. He worked on a sketch of the red-eyed kid from the beanie to his shoulders, all scrunched up. The only thing he could fill in on the face, however, was just the eyes. He specifically dug through his drawer for a red pen, circling the black dots he pushed into the paper. The rest of the face was completely unknown to him. It was in the shadows when he saw it, so he just colored it in with his black ball-point pen.

Before going to sleep, he gave the guy a name.

Blurryface.

Sure, it was probably a stupid idea to give this look-a-like a name, let alone call him Blurryface, but it just fit the features of this guy. It was gonna be impossible to forget about him.

Taking one more look into the red eyes of the sketch, Tyler shut the journal and fell back into the blanket. He then proceeded to have the worst nightmare of his life.

|-/

The cycle continued each night. He would dream about this mystery kid, each time the nightmares getting worse and worse than before.

Sometimes, Blurryface would stand above him in his sleep and torment him by reaching at his face with his skinny fingers, nails almost looking like claws and scratching at them with intent to pull them out of his sockets.

Other times, Blurryface starts talking and doesn’t stop. He rants on about reaching through Tyler’s ribcage and ripping his heart straight from his chest, crushing it in his fist and making sure Tyler feels everything.

However scary these nightmares may seem, Tyler’s come to the conclusion that Blurryface is, in fact, in his head.

He can hear his voice when he’s asleep, sure. That makes absolute sense. But hearing him during the day, in the middle of history class, is not normal. 

He hears him yell at him during choir, telling him he’s not good enough at singing (not that Tyler wouldn’t not agree with him on this point, in honesty). He hears him complain about how badly Tyler’s playing the piano during his free time down in the basement. The worst of all, however, is when he’s in lyrical poetry class and Mr. Jackson is lecturing them all on the words of Bob Dylan, and Blurryface starts bothering Tyler about his writing.

His writing, his poetry, his songs all get constant questions alone from his mother and his brother Zack, are now getting torn apart by Blurryface’s comments.

“You don’t even know how to spell correctly,” he says as Tyler furiously rewrites words over and over while his hand shakes.

“None of these lyrics make sense,” he says while Tyler tries to form rhymes in his head and translate them onto paper.

“You’re so anxious and depressed, why are you writing all this dumb stuff anyway?” he asks while Tyler rubs his wet cheeks and tries his hardest not to punch the wall beside him on his bed.

Sometimes he wished that Blurryface would just shut his mouth and leave him be.

|-/

The first time Blurryface shuts his mouth for once, is when it’s 3am in Tyler’s old apartment. He’s sitting on his couch, the TV playing some obscure show in the background while he takes a sip from his water bottle and glances over at the other end of the couch. It’s been a few years after college, a few years after high school, a long time since Blurryface first showed up.

Joshua Dun is kind of really hot.

Not that Tyler’s gonna say that out loud to anyone (especially Josh, can you imagine his reaction?), but Blurryface can abuse that information all he wants.

But for right now, he’s silent. Everything is silent, except for the TV obviously. Everyone in this room is quiet.

Joshua Dun is a masterpiece.

He has huge muscles, and with the help of his biceps he could probably break Tyler’s legs in half. He also had this huge tattoo on his left arm, of a tree and the sun and the ocean. Josh told him once when they were just starting to get to know each other, that he planned to get a huge sunset on the sleeve too.

Tyler just nodded in agreement and watched Josh’s brown hair fall against his forehead a little bit.

He and Tyler are both sitting on the couch, alone in Tyler’s apartment. Josh is on his phone, scrolling through his Instagram and giggling lightly to himself. Tyler is subtly wringing his hands and looking at the TV. He decides to break the silence instead of waiting for Josh to do it.

They both seem to have the same idea, as they say ‘hey’ at the same time.

“Hey,” Tyler swallows and turns his head towards Josh.

“Hey,” Josh looks up from his phone, and instead of waiting for Tyler to continue speaking, he holds out his phone towards him and points at the screen. “Look at this really cute cat.”

Tyler blinks and looks down at the iPhone, the screen cracked in the upper-right corner. There’s a cat wrapped up in a blanket on the screen.

Joshua Dun’s hands are really, really, really big.

He could probably punch Tyler in the face and he wouldn’t mind.

“Sweet,” Tyler gulped a little hard as Josh moves his phone back onto his knee and shuts the screen off. “Hey, Josh?”

Josh lifts his head back up from his phone again; he had started to go through his photo gallery, Tyler was sure there was a ton of cats in one of the folders. “Yeah? What’s up?”

Tyler took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment before speaking slowly.

“What’s your dream, Josh?”

Silence.

Tyler was sure that he just asked either the most stupidest question, or the most touchy.

Either way, he felt like he was overstepping Josh’s boundaries and was going to get some backlash in a second.

“Well,” there was a pause, Tyler heard Josh scratch his beard, and he continued as Tyler opened his eyes back up and peered over at him, “I really wanna express what I can through music. I mean, it’s why I work at Guitar Center. I wanna get something out there to people that need to hear it. Whatever it is.”

Tyler’s eyes widened and he nodded again, just like he did when Josh told him about his tattoo sleeve. He couldn’t not agree with him. “I wanna do the same thing,” he shook his head then. “I mean, I wanna get music out there, to people who need it.” He didn’t mean work at Guitar Center - however, it was a nice store. Tons of ukuleles to choose from in the acoustics room.

Josh nodded, smiling a little bit and looking down at his phone. “We both have something we wanna do, don’t we? And it just so happens to be the same thing? That’s good.”

“Yeah,” Tyler swallowed, feeling Blurryface poke at the inside of his head as if trying to give him a headache. He sighed and then began to wring his hands again. He wanted to keep talking with Josh. Not just about music and their dreams, but about how Josh was a great drummer, how Josh’s arms were strong and Tyler’s were flimsy, and how he really wanted to feel how strong Josh was. But his brain clicked and he looked straight up at Josh, eyes wide as he reached over and grabbed Josh’s bicep. “Y’know what we should do?”

Josh blinked and looked down at Tyler’s hand around his arm, then back up to look him in the eyes. He was in the middle of tweeting something out on his Twitter account; it was most likely something about cats as usual. “What?”

“We should start a band.” Tyler smiled a little bit, feeling content. He couldn’t believe it. He wanted to start this stupid band since his friends Nick and Chris left about a month ago because they had gotten busy. Tyler understood, but he’s been without a drummer for a month, and he really missed singing on those lonely bar stages with someone else, playing the piano and the ukulele.

Josh eyed Tyler for a moment before smiling big and nodding in agreement. “We should start a band.”

Tyler felt his heart begin to race. Letting go of Josh’s arm he pat his shoulder slightly and sat back, smiling still. This was gonna be exciting.

He pulled out his phone as soon as he got a notification in his lockscreen. It was a tweet from Josh, and he tagged him in it.

'Big things can happen @ 3am. You’ll see what happens next w/ me and @tylerrjoseph’.

|-/

A few months later, Tyler and Josh are both touring around Ohio, at tiny bars and tiny venues and tiny theatres. Not too much happens except that the band (twenty one pilots, it was what Tyler called it when he had Nick and Chris on his team and he feels like it still sticks) gets some attention, and after playing the self-titled album Tyler gets antsy for some new chords.

“I’ve gotta write more stuff, Josh, but it’s just hard,” Tyler mumbled into the pillow, laying face-first on a hotel room mattress and trying his best not to break down. “I mean, I’ve been working on stuff, I always am. But it just won’t translate from up here-” he pointed to his head, “-to in there.” Tyler then pointed to the empty side of his bed, where an opened journal laid across the blanket.

Blurryface came back around that day after he and Josh decided on starting the band up again, cursing at him to quit being such a dreamer and that his dreams won’t ever come true.

"What’s this?” Tyler lifted his head up and blinked at Josh, who was standing on the other side of the bed and holding the journal.

“It’s a journal, I’ve literally shown it to you countless times when I was having difficulties with my lyrics,” Tyler screwed up his face, but then he widened his eyes and tried to reach for the notebook quickly. “Don’t look through it Josh, you’re not allowed to, stop it,” Tyler was frantically making grabbing motions towards the book, but Josh was holding it above and he turned around on his heel. The page that was open was the picture of Blurryface. Tyler bit his bottom lip and let out a shaky breath. “Josh…”

“Tyler, what the hell is this?” Josh screwed his face up at the sketch. Tyler was breathing a little heavily, staring down the beady red eyes and trying not to shake too much.

The page was worn, the pen sketch was blotchy and messed up. The ink itself was fading, but the one thing on the page that wasn’t disappearing were the red eyes. That made Tyler want to scream (not like how he screams in his songs, however, that was to get people’s attention) for a good ten minutes.

Josh turned around and looked down at Tyler, who was quite visibly shaking and looked terribly uncomfortable. He ended up dropping the journal down onto the mattress and climbed up onto the bed, reaching over for Tyler’s hands that were starting to pull at his short brown hair.

Tyler almost instinctively grabbed Josh’s hand, pulling himself up slightly from his scrunched up position so that he could get as close to Josh as he would allow. Thankfully, Josh wasn’t really caring about his personal space because he quite literally pulled Tyler as close as he could with his hands still grasping his own.

They sat that way for a good ten minutes, Tyler slowly calming down and leaning his forehead against Josh’s shoulder. “Thank you,” Tyler spoke breathlessly, swallowing dry as he took one of his hands away from Josh’s clenched grasp and wiped at his cheeks.

Blurryface was getting pissed off about this entire situation. He was screaming at Tyler to get away from Josh, to push him off the bed and run out of the hotel room without a thought.

“Get the hell outta here, you’re so worthless. You’re a waste of Josh’s time and energy,” Blurryface was screeching, tormenting Tyler and making him want to cry harder now. It was the worst feeling, to have to hear this guy constantly yell and breathe down the back of his neck and have no one hear the words he’s said to him since his childhood. “Josh doesn’t care about you in the way you think he does, the way you want him to.”

Josh didn’t let go of Tyler for a long time.

It ended up being around midnight when Tyler finally slipped himself out of Josh’s arms and laid down against the mattress, curled up in the tightest ball he could while Josh stood up off the bed. He reached for the journal and closed it, but not before getting a good look at the sketch again. It was terrifying, and he was sure that he knew where he had come from. Blurryface was not good for Tyler. Not at all.

|-/

Within four years, many things occurred for the band twenty one pilots. Two new albums, ‘Regional at Best’ and ‘Vessel’; a signing to the record label Fueled By Ramen; a television debut after constant concerts; their first ever tour, titled Quiet Is Violent World Tour; tons of music videos released to YouTube; plenty of interviews that turn out to be either very helpful to the fanbase or completely useless but enjoyable nonetheless.

The boys were getting somewhere, and Tyler especially couldn’t believe it as he finished the drumbeat of ‘Trees’ and jumping down off the platform that would be placed above a select few of the audience, to hold him and a drum up. Confetti was drifting down from the sky, the hazy fog from the stage drifting through the crowd and hiding himself and Josh for a moment, who was also standing up on his own platform about 25 feet apart from Tyler. They both looked over at each other and smiled brightly, glad that this tour had run smoothly.

That was months ago.

Now, Tyler was staring at himself in a mirror and glaring at his features.

The nightmares had continued over the years. They obviously had gotten worse, causing Tyler to lose much sleep while on the tour bus and trying to rest up both his mind and his vocal chords. In previous concerts, Tyler remembers being in the middle of ‘House of Gold’ when he started hearing Blurryface scream at him over the crowds’ shouting - the Clique as they had been calling themselves now - and telling him to smash his ukulele against the piano behind him. He had to stop the song for a moment, stare down at the stage through his circular sunglasses. His floral kimono that he wore during this song was flowing about in the breeze. He felt stone cold, just thinking about doing that.

He snapped out of his sudden focus on Blurryface’s words when he heard someone in his earpiece ask what was wrong. He shook his head and cleared his throat, tried to crack a smile as he spoke into the mic, “Sorry about that,” an intake of breath and he continued, “I was thinking about how great Josh is on the drums.”

That was usually his fallback plan when Blurryface distracted him in the middle of a show.

“I was thinking about Josh’s makeup, sorry everyone.”

“I was just wondering about how Josh slept last night, did you sleep good?”

“I was thinking about Josh Dun on the drums, everybody.”

It was always Josh Dun.

At least Josh never got upset about the random comments. He usually appreciated them more than anything.

Those happened to be one of the many instances that Blurryface got too much control in Tyler’s head.

Back to the present.

Tyler gripped the sink tightly, biting down on his bottom lip and making himself bleed profusely. He couldn’t help it exactly, he was alone in his hotel room and trying his best to maintain his composure while hearing the TV in the background. It was so annoying, he never exactly believed what was on TV anyway. Neither did Josh. They both had their reasons, but they always were having it on in the background for a filler.

“Why are you just standing here,” Blurryface hissed. “Do something you know you wanna do.”  
Tyler blinked and looked at himself in the mirror again, this time looking exhausted and blood on his chin. He was trying not to cry as he looked at the person behind him in the mirror. He was shaking his head, looking at Blurryface dead in the eyes and starting to plead with him.

“Blurry, I’m not gonna do it, you can’t make me do it, I won’t do it,” Tyler swallowed and watched as Blurryface lifted up his hands. They were coated in a tar-like substance, black as pitch and grabbing Tyler’s wrists tightly. It was sticky, it was disgusting, and Tyler felt gross as Blurryface dragged him down onto the tiled floor of the bathroom and held onto both of his wrists with one of his tar hands, and began to rummage around in a nearby bag for something that Tyler didn’t want to have to look at. “Let me go, Blurry, I don’t wanna do this, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t.”

Blurryface brought out a razor and easily broke it out of the plastic Bic casing, and yanked at Tyler’s wrists abruptly. “You know you wanna do this, Ty, you gotta break down. You gotta fall apart. It’s gonna happen someday, why not make it tonight instead of the future baby boy?”

Tyler couldn’t believe that he was nodding to this stupid imaginary guy that was all in his head. He couldn’t believe that he was listening to him, crying quietly and not saying a word as Blurryface brought the razor blade against Tyler’s forearms. He was wincing and he knew that he was the one doing this to himself, it was pretty clear. But Blurryface was too real for him right now that he believed that it was the manifestation before him that was doing this terrible deed to his body.

It was messing with his mind and his soul. Both Blurryface in general, and also the fact that he was dealing with a lot of blood loss with an included dose of lack of sleep.

The tar was mixing with Tyler’s blood and he was shivering, he was shivering because he was getting scared, he was getting scared because he had made a promise to himself when he first did something like this to himself that he would make sure to live past 25.

This, obviously, was not helping that promise whatsoever.

“Ain’t this your ‘Ode to Sleep’, Ty?” Blurryface laughed and continued to etch deep lines into Tyler’s forearms. Tyler was starting to close his eyes, so Blurryface immediately dropped the razor blade and smacked Tyler’s cheek as hard as he could. He stirred and winced again, still crying and not fighting Blurryface at all. “C’mon, baby boy, you’re going out the way you always thought you would, aren’t you?”

Tyler wanted to scream.

Tyler wanted to tear himself away from Blurryface.

Tyler wanted to wrap his arms up in bandages and find Josh.

Josh.

Josh Dun.

Joshua Dun.

“JOSH!!!” Tyler screamed as loud as he could, his voice cracking and letting out a rapid, watery sob as he tried to regain his breath. “Oh, my God, Josh!”

He hoped to God that Josh could hear him from the next room over.

All he could see was a deep red all around him on the floor of the bathroom, the razor submerged in the blood. It was getting all sticky, all Tyler could smell was a metallic copper. That, and he somehow could smell burning tar which made him want to throw up immediately. His vision was blurry with tears, his hands were covered in his own blood, and the cuts were still oozing onto his jeans. And the blood, God the blood was maybe the worst part of this entire ordeal.

“You really think Josh is gonna come in to rescue you, Tyler?” Blurryface chuckled in the back of Tyler’s head and he reached up, clutching fistfulls of his hair and trying to get him to shut up. Blurryface seemed to just roll his eyes in response. At least he didn’t say anything.

“Josh, please, get in...here…” Tyler almost whimpered, pleading silently now for even anyone to come and find him. He didn’t like this situation, he knew he was gonna die if no one found him. There was a reason why he hadn’t reached for a towel to clot the blood.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to live past 25.

Maybe he wasn’t supposed to perform anymore.

Maybe Josh wasn’t supposed to come save him this time.

Or maybe he was, because Tyler let out one more pitiful, “Josh?!” before he heard the door open, the handle slamming into the wall. Footsteps, the door to the bathroom opened and Tyler gave one lift of his head up wards the ceiling before slipping back onto the tiles on his back.

He saw Josh’s red mohawk, and then proceeded to blacked out on the stained bathroom tiles.

|-/

It was probably an hour or so later when Tyler jolted awake and sat up in his hotel bed. He didn’t remember going to bed so early, but maybe there was a reason for it.

He also didn’t feel as cold as before. In fact, there was a warm blanket around him as we as someone’s arm thrown across his abdomen. He blinked sleep from his eyes and saw Josh’s signature tattoo sleeve across his stomach. This made him screw his face up in confusion, and he immediately turned and looked over at Josh. His head was against a pillow, he was out cold.

Figures. Just when Tyler wanted answered.

He looked back down at Josh, his red hair falling in front of his eyes. It was really cute.

Now Tyler was starting to feel a little guilty.

He was starting to feel very, very, very guilty. Guilty about how his mind works, how he probably scared Josh half to death before he passed out.

Wait.

Why did he pass out again?

Tyler blinked and looked down at his hands, seeing some copper-looking stuff dried on his fingertips. He then looked down at his forearms, widening his eyes as he saw bandages wrapped all around his skinny limbs. Oh, no. Did he really do this to himself? He had every right to feel guilty for making Josh scared, he was sure now.

He shifted in the bed and scooted back down into the covers, rubbing his upper forearms and feeling that he had no feeling. He couldn’t feel anything right now. He just felt empty.

“Josh,” Tyler whispered, hoarse and ended up coughing into his elbow. He must have been asleep for longer than an hour, at least. “Josh, wake up. Wake up, Josh, please.”

“Mph,” Josh rubbed his face with his free arm. The other was still draped over Tyler’s small frame, which Tyler was quite thankful for. “‘M wake, Ty, I’m awake,” he blinked a few times before looking down at Tyler. Josh was much taller than Tyler in a standing position, it only made sense that Tyler was shrunken down into the comforter and Josh was looking down upon him like he was a disheveled angel. He was one. “You’re awake?”

Tyler immediately scooted as close as he could to Josh under the blanket and buried his face into Josh’s chest. He carefully as possible wrapped his arms around Josh’s abdomen, wincing slightly as the bandages caught on Josh’s tank.

“Ty?”

Tyler was already asleep again.

Blurryface was deathly quiet.

|-/

Tyler awoke the next morning and immediately dug into his bags for his journal. He found a black ball-point pen and ripped out a page from the back. He started sketching furiously. Last night was mostly a blur, but the blur from Blurryface was completely lifted this time around.

Tyler started with Blurry’s shoes. Black Vans, with bright red socks. Then, black leggings. Gym shorts with two white stripes on the ends of each leg. Next, the black tee. The red beanie on top of his head. Then there was the face.

Blurry looked exactly like Tyler, minus the regular brown eyes. Instead, the almost too-regular-to-Tyler-Joseph red eyes that stared back at him as he dug around for a red ball-point pen and colored them in. He colored in the beanie, he colored in the socks. Then there was Tyler’s tattoos; complex and strictly black, the thick lines around his elbow on his left arm, the thin lines on his wrist.

Finally, the finishing touches.

The thick, tar-like blackness that covered his arms from his fingertips to his elbows, on both arms. He also colored in Blurry’s neck black, as the tar-like substance had also been there the night before.

Tyler dropped the pen on the bed and stared down at the sketch, rubbing his face a few times before turning back over to Josh who was just waking up.

“I think I just got a big idea,” he smiled for the first time in months. “A new album.”

Josh blinked sleep from his eyes and sat up, putting an arm around Tyler’s shoulders and pressing his lips against his temple. “Is it based on this terrible guy you just drew, Ty?”

“Yeah,” Tyler sighed and ran a hand through his blood-crusted hair. “But it’ll make him happy.”

|-/

Tyler lived past 25 in 2014. Tyler began writing out everything and anything that was coming to his mind, which surprisingly shut Blurryface up. It was all about him, the album. It was even called ‘Blurryface’, in honor of the title he was given back when Tyler was a little kid.

After releasing the song ‘Fairly Local’ to the public in March of this year, then the song ‘Tear in My Heart’ in April, and finally ‘Stressed Out’ also in April, it wasn’t until May that Tyler and Josh released the full album.

That’s when they started the Blurryface World Tour. Tyler was playing his signature ukulele and slamming keys on a piano, Josh playing the drums and doing flips off Tyler’s piano in the middle of the show.

Tyler decided, at the beginning of the tour, that he had to give Blurryface something else to sustain him while the tour lasted. On the first night, Tyler asked for some black body paint to be in his and Josh’s dressing room an hour before the show began. While Josh was in the room - his makeup job required red eyeliner and red eye shadow, and he was already done and on his phone - Tyler removed his shirt, carefully and slowly took a paintbrush, dipped it into the small container of black paint and began to paint his neck black. The first few strokes made him shiver, the paint was cold and the bristles were tickling him. Josh was watching carefully, and ended up standing up and helping Tyler with the back of his neck to get the paint all the way around his throat.

Tyler’s Adam’s Apple bobbed after he was done with his neck, and he looked over at Tyler in the mirror. He was thankful that Josh was behind him in the mirror, not Blurryface this time.

He then began to reach into the container, dip his fingertips and his palms into the paint and start to spread it all over his hands. It was sticky, it was cold, and kind of uncomfortable to have on, Tyler noticed immediately. The paint was choking him already.

Tyler finished with the paint on his arms once he got it up towards his inner elbows. With a sigh, he closed his eyes and did his best to relax. The paint had to dry, and there would be time for that in the next hour. Josh helped him with his shirt, and he sat down with Josh on the couch. Thankfully, the paint was already drying pretty quickly.

Tyler started wringing his hands.

“Ty, you don’t have to symbolize him. He’s got enough press coverage with the name of the album,” Josh squeezed Tyler’s forearm lightly and made Tyler look up at him. “You don’t have to be just like him.”

“No, Josh, I swear this is a good idea. You’ll see.” Tyler pressed his lips together and smiled lightly, reaching over for his red beanie and pulling it on. Josh fixed his hood and sighed, looking back down at his phone and posting a tweet.

Tyler pulled out phone phone and looked down at the notification.

‘Almost showtime. Hope you enjoy, Glasgøw. - spookyjim (me) and blurryface @tylerrjoseph’

|-/

The show started off amazing. The Clique in Glasgow was insane, jumping all around and singing along to the music that had only just been released.

Tyler pounded down on the piano keys, shredding on his ukulele while Josh played the drums easily. These songs all had meaning, they had more truer words than anything that Tyler had ever written.

During ‘House of Gold’, Tyler pulled on his floral kimono and circular sunglasses and began strumming. At the end of the song, he glanced down at his arms and saw that the paint he had placed so delicately on his skin an hour or so earlier was already coming off with sweat and constant strums of the ukulele.

At the end of the show, after ‘Trees’ finished and the confetti that they had used before showered among the crowd, Tyler glanced over at Josh who was holding his drumsticks close to his face and looking through the space in the middle that they created. Tyler smiled brightly and climbed down from the platform, hopped back up onto the stage.

He rushed over to the piano and grabbed the microphone, rushed back over to the center of the stage where Josh was. After they both bowed, Tyler lifted the mic up to his lips and spoke.

“We are twenty one pilots, and so are you,” Tyler pressed his lips together and smiled as the crowd screamed in agreement. “Now. About this stuff all over my body,” he chuckled a little bit and looked over at Josh before continuing. “It’s all a character. Blurryface. They’re the reason this album is a thing,” he held up a hand for the crowd to calm down slightly, “They represent for me, you for anyone who feels the same, as my insecurities. But don’t ever, ever let those things stop you, alright everybody?”

The Clique cheered. Tyler and Josh bowed one last time and left the stage.

Another notification while Tyler was in the tour bus. Josh loved Twitter.

‘We are twenty one pilots, and so are you Glasgøw. Thank you for having us, Clique. Me and @tylerrjoseph love you all.’

|-/

Tyler got into his hotel room that he was still sharing with Josh, and immediately stepped into the shower. After turning on the hot water and just letting the water run across his skin, he looked down into the tub and saw the black paint disappearing down the drain.

Tyler was sure that there was more paint where that came from, and he could hear Blurryface mumbling one of the lyrics to ‘Stressed Out’.

“My name’s Blurryface and I care what you think…”

**Author's Note:**

> tw; depression, anxiety, self harm, implied suicide attempt, blood  
> if youre not into that please dont read this i dont want anyone uncomfortable with this!!!


End file.
